WIP Summary of Davies 2017 article from special Theory Culture and Society issue on Elites and Power after Financialization

Causal loop diagram illustrating a variety of feedback loops influencing the price of oil.

Book summary of Albert O Hirschman's 1982 book, explaining cycles of collective public action.

About the Model 

Model description: 

This model is designed to simulate the Covid-19 outbreak in Burnie, Tasmania by estimating several factors such as exposed population, infection rate, testing rate, recovery rate, death rate and immunity loss. The model also simulates the measures implemented by the government which will impact on the local infection and economy. 

 

Assumption:

Government policies will reduce the mobility of the population as well as the infection. In addition, economic activities in the tourism and hospitality industry will suffer negative influences from the government measures. However, essential businesses like supermarkets will benefit from the health policies on the contrary.

 

Variables:

Infection rate, recovery rate, death rate, testing rate are the variables to the cases of Covid-19. On the other hand, the number of cases is also a variable to the government policies, which directly influences the number of exposed. 

 

The GDP is dependent on the variables of economic activities. Nonetheless, the government’s lockdown measure has also become the variable to the economic activities. 

 

Interesting insights:

Government policies are effective to curb infection by reducing the number of exposed when the case number is greater than 10. The economy becomes stagnant when the case spikes up but it climbs up again when the number of cases is under control. 

​BACKGROUND:

Causal loop representations of macroeconomics taken from the System Dynamics literature contrasted with Forrester's main analysis of social and business organization layers See also Saeed's Forrester Economics IM-183285

This model is designed to simulate the outbreak of Covid-19 in Burnie in Tasmania, death cases, the governmental responses and Burnie local economy. 

No economy can function well without adequate funding and in the absence of finance will eventually fall into recession. Funds (financial assets in the model) are primarily injected through investments. This is certainly true for investments and payments undertaken by the government but also for private investments via bank loans. Net exports (i.e.trade surpluses) also represent an injecton of financial assets into the economy. By contrast financial assets are taken out of the economy through taxation, the repayment of bank loans and the running of a negative trade balance. Also, if the population in aggregate decides to save more this has the effect as if money were taken out of the economy. I have deliberately avoided specifying where the funds for treasury payments and public investments come from, as this is controversial. Modern Monetary Theory, for instance, says that these funds are not provided through tax revenue. Austerity can be seen as a process that deliberately diminishes or takes out financial assets from the economy through taxation, restrictions on bank loans or cutbacks in payments and public spending by the government. It is probably useful to look at insights 2740 and 2741 before examining this CLD because they provide the context and purpose for net public spending and investment.

Based on 2023 framework from Australian Treasury mapped into the Salutogenesis framework via social wellbeing

Investigations into the relationships responsible for the success and failure of nations. This investigation was prompted after reading numerous references on the subject and perceiving that *Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty* by Acemoglu and Robinson seem to make a great deal of sense.

this model shows the relationship between economic growth and government debt (just the bailout debt) and the mortgage default burden. At the current rates, the debt will never be paid off.

Spending by the government creates its own 'financial resource' as the process of crediting an account in the private sector takes place. This may sound like nonsense, but in fact it is 'monetary reality'. This premise is supported by Bell (1998; 2000) and Wray (1998a) who argue that the Treasury does not need to collect or borrow funds in order to spend, but crates new funds as it spends.

Perhaps the following thought experiment  helps to understand how this is possible.  

If you imagine two drawers, each representing an account. The first drawer contains 100 gold coins and the second is empty. Also imagine that there are no other gold coins available at this time. Let's call the first drawer account A and the second account B. Now if you want to transfer 30 gold coins from account A to account B, you would actually first have to take the coins out of drawer A and then place them into drawer B. Account A will then necessarily have 30 coins less in it. Now imagine accounts A and B are held in a computer as electronic money. Instead of 100 gold coins, account A only contains the computer generated number '100'  and account B shows '0'. To get account B to show a balance of '30', it would now simple be necessary to change the '0' to '30' on the computer. The need to raid account A and to take '30' from the number '100' before you could credit  account B does not exist. Money is created as it is entered in B's account irrespective of whether A's account is debited before or after this process or not at